While I cannot speak to the experiences of others, I found SCHRÖDINGER’S DOG to be one of the best and most insightful debut novels I have read in years. Reading it in two sittings, I was completely engaged both emotionally and intellectually, and I still cannot stop thinking about it, coming to new realizations each time I reflect on its themes of perception, reality, time, and death and their interrelationships. Except for the novel’s title, in which a dog is substituted for “Schrödinger’s cat,” a “thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, the physics principles that make this story so hypnotic and its conclusion so satisfyingly elusive are hidden within, just as Schrödinger’s cat or dog, hidden within its box, is both alive and dead. Although this may seem like an odd and highly esoteric principle around which to mold such a sensitive and emotion-filled novel about a man and his dying son, debut novelist Martin Dumont uses it as the unobtrusive crux of his story and part of its dramatic conclusion. In doing so, he achieves a kind of originality I myself have never before encountered in literary fiction.
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Author Aravind Adiga, whose Indian family immigrated to Australia during his childhood, is well familiar with Australia’s social and economic conditions, and with its attitudes toward “brown”people, both legal and illegal. His sensitivity and empathy in his presentation of Danny as a kind, thoughtful, and honest main character make Danny’s problems as an illegal resident from Sri Lanka and his lack of options particularly vivid for the reader. When he arrives at work one morning, he finds a police van parked across the street and learns that there has been a murder across from where he is working – in a house which he himself has cleaned many times over the past two years. He knows the female owner, Radha, a married woman who is having an affair, and he is also a worker of the person who may have killed her. With the author’s stunning ability to present Danny’s hopes, his memories of beauty from the past, and his fully imagined dreams for the future, which he presents impressionistically, Danny comes fully to life – a real person with a real life and personality – and not simply a character who is illustrating social conditions, themes, and ethical problems. Danny must decide whether to help the police with much-needed information and risk deportation, or keep quiet and let events take their course. Outstanding!
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A few days ago, I listed the most popular reviews on this site for 2019. These reviews reflect the number of hits a review receives when a reader searches for a particular review on this site. They are not necessarily reviews of my personal favorites. Here are some of my own favorite books of special interest, books with unique points of view, with links to the full reviews. The list begins with a book that I have found the most inspiring book of the year, one written by a man in prison for life for something he did not do, but in which, amazingly, he maintains his good humor and does not descend into self-pity.
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A few days ago, I listed the most popular reviews on this site for 2019. These reviews reflect the number of hits a review receives when a reader searches for a particular review on this site. They are not necessarily reviews of my personal favorites. Here are some of my own favorite books of special interest, books with unique points of view, with links to the full reviews. The list begins with a book that I have found the most inspiring book of the year, one written by a man in prison for life for something he did not do, but in which, amazingly, he maintains his good humor and does not descend into self-pity.
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NOTE: Each year I like to see which reviews are the most popular on this website, and each year I find some surprises. Because the site ranks books and reviews by their total number of hits, older books which have been on the site for a long time have had more opportunity to accumulate many hits. Newer books tend to be far down in the list, with a few lucky ones eventually making it to the Top 25 as the years pass. Here is the list some of the old favorites which have been in the Top 25 for five or more years. Newer books which are performing particularly well and may one day become Top 25 Books are listed separately following the “oldies.” #1 overall: Favel Parett’s PAST THE SHALLOWS, a family drama set in Tasmania. On the list since 2014 when the review was posted, this book seems to be the #1 book every time I check the DAILY stats, and it makes me wonder if this family drama cover-ru-197x300set on the southernmost island at the end of the Australian continent is being taught in the schools in Australia andTasmania. It has more than seven times the number of hits of any other book listed here, including all the books and reviews here for Jo Nesbo’s work! Other surprises appear. #9. Jo Nesbo’s latest (and I think best) thriller, THE KNIFE, concerns the death of someone close to Harry Hole, with beautifully developed themes, flawless pacing, intriguing and repeating subordinate characters, imaginative plotting, unrelenting dark atmosphere, and plot twists – one after another – after another. From August 2019. (#20 on the overall list, though the review has been posted for only four months. Look for this one to be in the Top Ten overall next year.)
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